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Communication as critical inquiry in service-learning.

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Abstract

Service-learning courses offer the opportunity for students to make sense of the social world by recognizing its political and ethical dimensions through practical engagement in community problems. This paper presents pedagogical resources to inspire students in service-learning courses to experience: 1) dialogue inside and outside the class, 2) critical inquiry into a social issue, and, 3) surprises that invite students to activate civic responsibility. The interplay of dialogue, critical inquiry, and surprises presents the opportunity for students to experience how they can shape and redefine their roles in society, and as importantly, how society can change as a result of their involvement.

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Pedagogy for Community Action

Service-learning courses offer the opportunity for students to make sense of the social world in ways that do not rely on the linear logic of textbooks. While texts present valuable information, it is too often done by hiding the political nature of the content rather than highlighting it. Without service-learning, students may acquire a complex knowledge in their academic pursuits, but of the kind unsituated and devoid of meaningful ethical obligation. Books certainly have a central role in the service-learning process, yet students need to extend that learning through engagement with and reflection on the messy character of communal life. It is there, in the vastness of uncertainty and difference, set against the backdrop of our collective concerns, that students experience not the resolution of doubt, but the value of commitment (Loeb, 1999). This kind of learning moves students beyond the acquisition of knowledge as a gateway to power, into the territory of ethics and questions of how we ought to live. To do so recognizes the social inequities that exist in our world and the attending citizen responsibilities to respond. Ultimately, students must ask to what degree are they complicit in the perpetuation of social ills, or in what ways are they poised to confront and act to alleviate pressing, systemic inequities.

Artz (2001) argues that service-learning courses need to do more than charity work. Recognizing charity can attend to urgent community needs, Artz nevertheless argues convincingly that this kind of benevolence can obscure the underlying practices, attitudes, and institutional structures that render charity necessary in the first place. It is through critical engagement that service-learning can affect its higher goal--of yielding meaningful change for the student and the community. In service-learning courses, students recognize and participate in the political underpinnings of our society, as revealed in and expressed through communication.

Communication and Community

Communication and community intersect to be sure, each anchored in the other to define its reality and each simultaneously subject to fluctuation, shifting allegiances, and evolving concerns. Community emerges from communication; that is, it is realized in and through...

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